


Talking Board

by andysmmrs



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: I hope y'all like it I've never written from E.C.'s pov so I hope it's not like, Misuse of a Talking Board, Murder (Violent), Summoning the Dead, Suspension of Disbelief Required, terrible alkajs;fjka
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 15:43:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21376552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andysmmrs/pseuds/andysmmrs
Summary: Necromancy was not becoming of a young gentleman, but it did make for a good scary story. The man called Cornelius Hickey wasn’t concerned with being a gentleman, though, and he always appreciated scary stories. Besides, he didn’t believe in ghosts...
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	Talking Board

Necromancy was not becoming of a young gentleman, but it did make for a good scary story. The man called Cornelius Hickey wasn’t concerned with being a gentleman, though, and he always appreciated scary stories. Besides, he didn’t believe in ghosts. Not in any spooky beyond-the-grave sort of way. He was of the belief that the only ghosts in this world existed in the memories a man allowed himself to be plagued by. He himself had never known ghosts of that kind, though a man of a similar background might. He had never been one for self-hatred.

Billy had brought the subject of the board up before, several times in fact, talking about it in the most pointedly uninterested way he could. As uninterested as he might have sounded in the flat tone he’d begin a sentence with, his prying cadence which always beckoned for some reply was enough to give the game away. 

“It’s a type of summoning spell, essentially,” he began once, perking up as soon as Hickey asked about it, although he was quick to correct his own enthusiasm. “You say a chant or something when you begin, and then the spirits can use the board to communicate.”

“What’s this board look like, Billy?”

He complained that it would be easier to draw it, trying to maintain an air of mystery, but the need to tell the story overcame him quickly and so he explained to him, in detail, the only talking board he had seen in his life, which was at a medium’s parlour, in London.

“I have a friend in London who wanted to get married, but wanted his father to give his blessing to the union. His father passed away a few months earlier, though, so he went to a medium to communicate with his father. It was carved by hand. On it was the whole alphabet, then the phrases ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Hello’, and ‘Goodnight’. There was a sun in the left corner, and a moon in the right.”

“And she used the board to talk to your friend’s father?”

“Yes.” Billy responds, and just for a moment his eyes go wide as he relates to him what he saw in the medium’s parlour that evening. It had been a spectacle indeed, the woman’s eyes rolled back into her head when she placed her hands on the planchette - which was the piece with the hole in it that moved about on the board, he explained - and then instructed him and his friend to do the same. Her hands were like ice, Billy said that a few times over while telling the story. At the end of it all, what happened was his friend’s father contacted them through the board, and gave permission for the wedding to take place.

“I never told him, but I was sure it was all just a show,” Billy asserted, after finishing the story.

“But the planchette moved,” Hickey protested - mostly to see Billy roll his eyes and scoff, and to keep the conversation going. He did delight in being contrary. “And you said neither you or your friend did it. And you didn’t feel her doin’ it. It even answered your questions.” 

“I’m not a child, Cornelius,” Billy shot back, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”

Solomon Tozer believed in ghosts. He believed in souls and lost souls and all of it. He told a fantastic story about the ghost of a girl that lived on the street he grew up. He told the story to a gaggle of men once that were well spooked by the depiction of the girl’s troubled wailing. Solomon responded strongly when the talking board was brought up.

“There are some things you’re just not meant to mess with, Mr. Hickey.”

“How do you mean?”

“If someone’s left over after they’ve died, and they’re wanderin’ about naturally, that’s one thing. To… conjure up a person’s soul like that, after they’ve already gone to rest, that’s a different matter.” 

“Why?”

“Because you’re supposed to let them rest!” Solomon was offended now, not angry enough to make Hickey feel like he ought to back off, just enough to be entertaining.  
“What if it’s a person you know? Someone you know wouldn’t mind it?” Tom Hartnell interrupted. “Wouldn’t they be glad to see you?” 

Solomon didn’t have an answer, and Hartnell seemed like a man who just won an argument hosted mostly in his mind, which was amusing, considering that he had been eavesdropping anyway.

Hartnell had been more useful than he would know. Solomon was grappling with the question himself, and so by the time Hickey constructed a makeshift talking board, he was changed enough in his opinion to volunteer to help conjure up a spirit. 

“So long as you’re not gonna be botherin’ some man you don’t know. So long as you know who you’re callin’.” 

And so a time and place was set for them to meet and perform the ritual as Billy remembered it. When he produced the makeshift board, created as best as he could from the description he’d been given, Billy laughed at it. 

“We’re using that? This isn’t going to work.”

“Why not?” he frowned, defensive of his handiwork. “It’s got the alphabet and the moon and your phrases, what’s missing?”

Billy sat quiet, not content to admit the reason he disliked the board was because it was not as beautiful as the last one he used. 

“Let’s just get on with it,” Solomon interjected, his voice showing more anxiety than he probably liked. “Who’re we callin’?”

Hickey responds that the spirit to be called is Billy’s grandfather, to Billy’s surprise. He’s quick to remind him- under his breath, so as to not upset Solomon - that neither of them really believe in any of this, so it doesn’t matter who they call, just that they give the ritual a fair go and do it as correctly as they can. 

Billy’s the one to say the spell to “awaken the board’s powers,'' as he puts it, giving Hickey a darting look that makes him doubt he’s being entirely serious about this. Solomon picks up on the look and is clearly bothered by it, but says nothing. After that, they themselves move the planchette around the board, Billy says it’s a necessary step, and then they wait.

It’s not long after that the planchette slides - albeit slowly - over to ‘Hello’. Solomon starts to shake, although it’s not clear if it’s from fear or excitement. 

“Let’s ask it a question- Let’s ask it’s name!” he says, looking between Hickey and Billy. 

“He knows what the spirit’s name is, it’s his grandfather,” Hickey responds matter-of-factly, Solomon gives him a look that plainly says ‘don’t be an ass’. Billy shakes his head.

“No, that’s a good question. Sometimes the spirits get confused, it might not be my grandfather, after all. I'll do it. I'll ask.” 

Hickey looks at Billy as he asks the question formally, trying to read his face, trying to see if he’s joking or not. It's hard to tell, and he’s noticing suddenly it’s freezing around them. He feels the cold seep right through his coat and into his blood. He’s spent months hating the cold, trying to get used to it. He thought he had, but he’s chilled now like he was when they first entered the Arctic, and it takes more from him than he’d like to admit to not shiver. When he breathes out, he can see his breath in front of his face. How had it gotten so cold so suddenly?

He hasn’t been paying attention to the board, but the planchette’s movement calls him back to it. It moves quicker this time, the scraping of the planchette against the board the only sound in the orlop besides Solomon’s nervous breathing. The planchette meandered across the first line of letters, stopping at ‘E’, which Billy was already starting to protest, when it moved backwards across the line stopping at ‘C’, and ceased movement afterwards. 

It had to be a coincidence. That was his first thought. He kept his usual smile plastered on his face amidst the confusion shared between Solomon and Billy. 

“What was your grandfather’s name? Are those his initials?”

“No. No, those aren’t the initials of anyone I know. Cornelius?”

He suddenly felt as if he were being suffocated, but only for an instant. He closes his eyes and he isn’t cold anymore. It’s springtime, and they’ve passed a rainy spell and have gone into what has been thus far balmy weather. When he opens them again, it’s night, and he’s in a pub. He’s not drinking, he doesn’t have much money to spend, and he doesn’t drink, anyway. He’s never liked losing time or inhibitions or control, but it’s easier to pick money off of men who do. He’s avoiding the pub owner who’s already giving him a suspicious look. He can’t afford anyone feeling like they need to get the law involved. All he has is half a pound, a knife, and the name he was born with. But not for long. 

There’s another man there, about his age, maybe younger. He’s one of the boys going on the Franklin Expedition. He’d heard a bit about it before, but not in the detail the man speaking now went on in. He was Irish, and very intoxicated. The man didn’t look rich, but the more he spoke about the expedition, the more attractive such a voyage sounded. He never dreamed of going out on the sea as an explorer, but it was getting tiring living in London the way he was. He was tired of the law and the Queen and everything other part of this system that seemed hellbent on keeping him living with his head down. Constantly hungry, always looking for something more, and always being punished for it. A chance to get away from it and to reinvent himself in a new land was too good to pass up.

He waited until the other men around the Irishman left him alone to introduce himself. Cornelius Hickey was from Limerick and had a little over half an hour left to live. Not that he knew that, of course. Over the course of that time, he became the last person to ever know the true name of the man who was going to take his life. It was a name Hickey had rolled around in his mouth several times, as he followed the murderer-to-be out of the bar, down the road and along the canal. Odd, how some people will give trust so freely. The man concealing a penknife in his coat had pondered on what it was that could earn trust so quickly at times. He found that alcohol was a fantastic lender of trust, trust a man would not usually give. He presumed manners were some part of it, as well. Hickey had paused sometimes, when his new friend would ask him farther down the road - away from others and into the dark, closer to the canal - but then he would just have to smile, utter some short words of reassurance, and resolve would break. 

What worked even better was asking him if there was something wrong. That was fun, even, because one could tell that Hickey did sense that something was indeed very wrong, but to confront it would call into question the character of the man he had trusted until that point. It would be an admission of a bad judge of character. Of foolishness, on Hickey's part. It was confrontational, and Cornelius Hickey, for all the niceties he had shown, was not a confrontational man. Not until the end, at least, when he had pulled the knife and demanded he give him the ship papers. He remembered wondering if all Irishmen were belligerent drunks when the unarmed man swung at him. He ducked and stabbed upwards, into the man's throat. 

Hickey's blood comes out in spurts of warm red which got on his hands and clothes. The smell of metal is heavy in the air as he drags the bleeding corpse into an alley. He makes quick work of disfiguring him, slashing up his face until it's hard to see what the man once looked like. He doesn't think he's the sort of person who'd have family to come looking for him, but he can't risk a loose end. He wipes the blood from his hands on the coat of the man that was Cornelius Hickey and takes the papers off of him before stuffing the coat pockets with loose bricks from the alley and dumping the body in the canal. 

Now, when he looks down at his hands, the blood still there. He moves backwards from the board until his back hits a wall. He blinks, and the blood's gone. It was never there. It couldn't have been. He washed that blood from his hands months ago. Billy and Tozer are looking at him, worry on Billy's face, confusion on Tozer's. He attempts to save face and gain back what control he had of the situation with a dry laugh and a wry smile.

“Brilliant, Billy, I hadn't thought you had a trick like that in you. Although it is a bit juvenile, isn't it?." He swallows the shake in his voice with force. "Did you two work this out together? I hadn't even known you were talking."

"Work what out, Mister Hickey?" Tozer's the first to respond. Quiet, Billy is, far too quiet. What does he know? What dark suspicions has he had and never told about? How did Billy, of all people, guess his game? It seemed impossible. Of course, not as impossible as the other option. 

But he won't give up a confession. Not yet. He isn't going to be tricked into saying anything. He knows how to play this game just as well as Billy does. He puts his hands back on the board, and he's satisfied with how steady they are. 

"Nothing, Solomon. Forget I mentioned it." He brushes the question off and looks over to Billy, an infuriating lack of understanding in his dumb, glassy eyes. "What will we ask it next?"

The planchette moves again - without a prompt. That's not how Billy said it'd work. Billy breathes in a jagged sort of gasp. None of them take their hands from the board as it spells something else out. Solomon repeats every letter the board gives them aloud.

"Canal? It said canal, what's that got to do with any-" He's hushed by Billy, who's looking at Hickey with wide eyes. There's a whole lot of sussing out going on behind those eyes, and if Hickey was looking back at Billy, he'd see that. But he's not. He's looking in the corner.

The man calling himself Mister Hickey was no stranger to the dark, and had mastered his fear of it in early childhood. The darkness had a nasty habit of shaping itself into whatever you'd least like to meet within its clutches. When he was a child, and had been frightened of things, it would take the shape of men. Men waiting to do terrible things to him. But he had taught himself that there rarely ever was anyone in the dark, and if there was, the last thing you'd want to do was try to see them. Listen for them, that's what he'd tell himself. Sight abandons you first in the dark. Listen for the scrape of a boot on pavement, or breathing. Wait for the smell of whisky. Don't ever try to look for them, you waste too much time looking. 

And yet, as the sounds of Solomon and Billy deliberating on the meaning of the board's message faded away, he could not peel his eyes away from the corner as the dark twisted into the crooked shape of the waterlogged and bloody corpse of one Cornelius Hickey. He was shivering, he must be cold, in the orlop and sopping, steam coming off of his body from the canal water - the scent had hit him, finally, the stench of the canal nearly masked the smell of the blood which was so poignant he could taste it on his tongue. There was a tension behind his eyes, they felt liable to pop from his skull. He had never believed in ghosts, but then what was standing in that corner? And why couldn't Billy see it? Or Tozer? He hadn't gone mad, had he? No, not quite. Hickey was being quiet, that was what the problem was. So of course the other two hadn't noticed him, hunched over, hiding in the corner, waiting to be noticed by the man who had stolen his name. Stolen his life.

Is that he had came for? Does he still want it? What a trade-off that would be. He ponders it for a while. Put the proper Hickey on this boat, where he belongs. Send himself wherever the Irishman had been. But Hickey looks even worse off than he is. Not a chance. Not without a fight. Not that he seemed like he wanted a fight, he was still standing in that damn corner, not doing anything other than breathing and bleeding and smelling like the bottom of a canal.

"What the hell do you want, then?" He said to Hickey, loud enough that Billy jumps from the sudden tone in his voice. The corpse doesn't answer. "Come on then, don't be shy now, you're here, aren't you? We called you here to speak, you bastard, don't go quiet on me now." 

"Who's he talkin' to?" Tozer asks, and Hickey hears it in the back of his mind. Tozer looks over his shoulder, straight at the corpse. "Do you see someone, Mister Hickey? Someone you know?"

Billy speaks before he can get a word in. "Sit back down. We'll close the board and finish the session." 

"Not a chance, Billy. He's traveled so far, we ought to have a bit of a chat before I send him back to where I sent him the first time."

He pulls his arm out of Billy's grip and walks towards the corpse. Hickey is looking at him now, a glower on his face which brings the pain behind his eyes back. Billy's got to his feet, after he pulls his wrist from his grip, and is putting a hand on each of his shoulders. Trying to calm him down, no doubt. Talk him out of it. Make him docile, maybe? No. He's not in league with him. Is he? Hickey looks between him and Billy and smiles a smug smile that he wants to tear off more than anything. He wants to finish the job of carving his face. He thought he had done a good enough job at the time, but clearly not. He should've taken his eyes. There's something that tells him that if he'd taken his eyes, he wouldn't be here now. But he's here, and his face is so torn open and dark with blood that the whites of his eyes gleam in a way that feels like it'd be named evil. Hickey smiles and it's like hot pokers being shoved up under his skin. 

He screams and falls onto his knees, clamping his eyes shut. It helps the pain a bit when he digs the heels of his palms into them and rubs like he's itching them. There's stars around when he opens his eyes and Billy and Tozer are trying to help him off of the ground. The smell of blood and decay and the canal is close, very close now and when he looks up he sees the men helping him are corpses now too, corpses like the man he threw in the canal. They're going to bring him to Hickey, they're going to make him switch, make him go wherever that Irish bastard was sent. 

He won't have it. He belongs on this ship. It's his destiny. He can feel it now more than he's ever felt it, he belongs here. He grits his teeth and lashes out, scratching and kicking like a cornered animal. He is a cornered animal, for now, but he can fight. He can kill, and every time he makes them bleed he is stronger. If he has to hurt Billy to be strong then so be it. It was foolish to get close anyway. To trust. There's a hand that gets close enough to bite and he bites down and draws blood. He's dropped onto the ground and then kicked in the stomach hard enough to yelp like a dog. Billy's pushing Tozer back, now, keeping him back from kicking again. Panic and anger and fear are alive and writing behind Solomon's eyes. Now who's the cornered animal? 

Focused now, he's resolute in what has to be done. Hickey will come back for him, he's sure of it, unless he takes the bastard out for good now. He crawls towards him. He'll kill him with his hands. He'll dig his eyes out like he should have done. Pulling himself off of the ground with a groan, he sets towards the corner of the ship, every step aching in his body like pins digging in deeper as he gets closer. There's something seeping into his brain like the cold as he nears the corpse and its wide bright eyes and its glistening teeth. The feeling that's making it feel as if his body is draining - like he's being bled like a stuck pig - is foreign to him. Foreign not as something he's never felt, but that he's made himself a stranger to. A man's voice in his head tells him that it's fear. He rejects the notion and lunges at Cornelius Hickey.

Before he crashes into him, he's tripped, and when he catches himself, he's not in the ship anymore, but he is on a boat. It's bright out, but it's in the dead of night, and he's surrounded by more corpses. Perhaps that's how he's meant to exist, crowded with death. It seems the natural way. The smell of the London canals are gone, though when he swallows he can taste blood. He doesn't feel like he's swallowed anything, though. The weight of it down his throat is absent and he feels empty. Empty entirely. The wind blows through him and he's suddenly not there anymore. He isn't anywhere, and then he's on the cold and stoney ground, and he's in more pain than before, more than he's ever been in, but he cannot cry out. He has no tongue, and so he lies on the ground in agony, twitching and bleeding and disfigured. 

When he closes his eyes the next time he opens them he's standing next to Billy, who looks as healthy as he ever does. Billy's frowning at him. 

"Is everything alright? You look ill..." he reaches out, putting the back of his hand to Hickey's forehead. 

"I'm fine, Billy." he swats his hand away. "I was just thinking..."

"About the story?" Billy asks, "Oh, come on, I haven't spooked you, have I? Don't be childish, Cornelius, there's no such thing as ghosts."

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to thank theiceandbones and radiojamming on Tumblr and scrunyuns on here for all the advice and help while writing this thing. It took a while but I'm actually satisfied with how it turned out, and now I've actually finished a one shot (this is a one-shot, right?) I feel like I'll be much more confident in writing more of them in the future!
> 
> P.S. The trademarked Ouija Board wasn't trademarked until 1890, but things like talking boards and other ghost-talking devices had been around since the 1840s. It's not super sound as far as historical accuracy goes, I know, but it's not really supposed to be the most legit historical document, this is just a spoopy lil story, ya dig?


End file.
